Archives: January 2009

A sewage plant in Japan's Nagano prefecture has started mining gold from sludge, earning a cool 5 million yen ($56,000) in its first month of operation.

On January 28, sewage plant operator Nagano Prefecture Suwa Construction Office announced that approximately 1.9 kilograms (4.2 lbs) of gold can be mined from each ton of molten fly ash generated when incinerating sludge at its facility in the town of Suwa.

Located in central Nagano prefecture, the Suwa Basin is home to numerous precision machining companies, metal plating facilities and hot springs, which may explain the high concentration of gold in the wastewater sludge.

Joint research conducted in 2007 by Nagano prefecture and the Japan Sewage Works Agency found that the concentration of gold in the ash was comparable to that of a high-grade ore. But because the cost of extracting the gold outweighed the potential profit, the operator continued treating the ash as an industrial waste material.

However, with the recent rise in the price of gold, Suwa decided to start mining the molten fly ash. Last October, they sold 1.4 tons of the ash to a smelting company. At the end of January, Suwa is scheduled to receive its first payment of 5 million yen ($56,000) for the recovered gold.

By the end of March 2009, Suwa plans to mine a total of 5 tons of ash for a profit of 15 million yen ($167,000). The sewage operator says it will use the revenue to help pay for plant maintenance and operating costs.

The facility treats about 100,000 tons of wastewater each day, generating about 3 tons of ash in the process.

A University of Tokyo research team led by professor/computer graphic artist Yoichiro Kawaguchi is developing robots designed to imitate primitive life forms. Mockups have been put on display at a Confucian temple in Tokyo, and working versions of the robots are scheduled for completion in two years.

According to the researchers, these robots are being developed as a way to explore artificial life and gain insights into how living things survive in a world governed by the law of the jungle.

Kawaguchi and his team are developing a basic reflex system for the primitive artificial life forms, as well as a visual processing system equipped with eyes that recognize and instinctively track certain objects.

In addition, the researchers are working to create powerful biomimetic actuators for locomotion. As part of their research, Kawaguchi and his team have conducted computer simulations to investigate the use of neural oscillators in a locomotion system that imitates the way centipedes crawl. They are also working on simple, mechanical tentacles that extend and contract to move the robot in a specified direction. If all goes according to schedule, they will have a fully functional robot in two years.

With a more thorough understanding of how primitive life forms survive, the researchers believe they can provide robots with a better ability to move, hunt, sense danger, and escape. They suggest that strong survival and hunting skills can be put to use in applications ranging from security guard dog robots to swarm robots tasked with exploring the surface of an alien planet.

Kawaguchi, a professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, has become known for creating artistic computer graphics programs that exhibit "lifelike" behavior such as self-organization and self-propagation. The robot mockups, which are three-dimensional models of his previous computer graphics work, will remain on display at Yushima Seid? temple until February 8.

A trio of old-school bunraku puppet robots revived nearly 40 years after they were unveiled at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka are temporarily on display at the National Science Museum in Tokyo. Modeled after classic bunraku puppets, each pre-programmed robot is driven by around 20 pneumatic cylinders that move the arms, torso, head and face in sync with accompanying audio.

To demonstrate a new method for fabricating three-dimensional living biological structures, researchers at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) have created a 5-millimeter tall doll composed of living cells.

According to an announcement made on January 22, the researchers created the tiny figurine by cultivating 100,000 cell capsules -- 0.1-millimeter balls of collagen, each coated with dozens of skin cells -- together inside a doll-shaped mold for one day. After the cell capsules had coalesced to form the doll-shaped mass of tissue, it was placed in a culture solution, where it reportedly survived for more than a day.

The researchers, led by IIS professor Shoji Takeuchi, also successfully tested the biofabrication method with human liver cells. According to Takeuchi, the technique can be used to create bodily organs and tissues with complex cellular structures, which may prove useful in the fields of regenerative medicine and drug development.

"The overall shape can be controlled by changing the mold," said Takeuchi, who expressed a desire to combine multiple types of cells to create a complex system that functions as a living organism.

The company logo for Yaroo Security, a security guard firm based in Tokyo's Katsushika ward, looks suspiciously like the one for Japan's most popular search engine. In this video, a camera crew visits Yaroo headquarters to ask about the resemblance.

A company spokesman flatly denies that their logo is an imitation of Yahoo's, although he admits, with a smile, that the logo designers did refer to it a little bit. Later in the interview (edited out), the spokesman explains that the name "Yaroo" is a play on the word "yaru" (meaning "do") -- a reference to their do-anything style of business.

Kintore-Z is a childlike robot athlete that falls apart when it over-exerts itself. Skip 50 seconds into the video to see what happens after too many push-ups.

The robot -- whose looks are said to be loosely modeled after Astro Boy and Mazinger Z -- was the 2007 winner of the annual Baca RoboCup competition, which aims to recognize Japan's stupidest and most useless robots.

Video artist The RP (a.k.a. rokapenis) created this fanciful promo video for Ove-Naxx, an Osaka breakcore/raggacore artist whose quirky sound incorporates elements of everything from dancehall to death metal and J-pop, along with bits of Latin American music and farm animal noises.